With a panel design, approximately 150 persons, 62 years of age and over will be studied in the year before and year after they move from age-dispersed to age-segregated housing. The study investigates how nutrition, dietary habits and intake, as well as health are effectd by changes and stressors in the psychosocial environment to which older persons may be exposed. Dependent variables include objective and evaluative measures of each major factor, including physiological and medial data where applicable. The study is also intended to identify persons whose eating is characteristically most responsive to external stimuli, thus identifying those who are most at-risk when envirnmental changes occur. The study also evaluates factors determining experienced stress and effectiveness of coping in older persons and the predictors of good morale and low levels of depression. We will also address the role of social networks in mediating these outcomes and describe how these networks are shaped and changed for older persons by living in two different environments. Causal modelling will be used to explicate the links among all of these factors.